Working With Activities

A new activity can be added to the visual by first selecting it in the left hand Plan Activities panel and then clicking it again to toggle it in or out of the visual.

When an activity is added to the visual by selecting the activity with the mouse in the left hand plan tree, it is initially added to the bottom of whichever swimlane is currently selected as default (in the swimlane panel), and will be marked as selected in the visual.

Vertical Position: You can then move the activity vertically to where you want it to be, using the up and down arrows in the Track attribute within the Activity Properties panel. You may wish to move the activity to the same track as one or more other activities - and a key feature of the app is that you can make use of space by placing activities on the same line if you wish to.

Text Flow: The activity name is plotted separately from the activity shape, because for short activities there may not be enough room to fit the text within the shape. This is a key feature of the app which scores over, say, using PowerPoint to plot shapes for activities. So the text will often flow out of the shape and so in order to help make best use of the space available, you can control how the activity name text flows, using the three buttons in the Text Flow attribute within the Activity Properties panel. The options are:
- Flow Right - Text is aligned to the left end of the activity shape and flows to the right, overflowing the shape at the right edge if the text is longer than the shape for the activity.
- Flow Left - Text is aligned to the right end of the activity shape and flows to the left.
- Centred - Text is centred and so may flow out of both left and right if it is longer than the activity shape

Shape: When an activity is first added to the visual, it will be given a default shape which will vary depending upon whether the activity is a milestone or not. Typically a Milestone will be given a Diamond or Triangle shape, and a non-milestone will be given a rectangle, rounded rectangle or bullet shape (a bullet is a rectangle with semi-circular ends). The shape can be changed using the dropdown in the shape attribute of the Activity Properties panel.

Style: An activity is initially given whatever is set to be the default style for an activity or milestone. This can be changed using the drop down in the Style attribute of the Activity Properties panel.

Height: An activity in the visual by default has a height of one track, but this can be changed for an individual activity using the up and down arrows in the Height attribute of the Activity Properties panel